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 28. Halloween (2018) (Rewatch) Revisiting this after really not liking Halloween Ends. I still think this is solid, and is my third favorite Halloween film (after the original, and 3), but there are some things that don't work for me (Dr. Sartain, a lot of the dialogue). At the same time there are some things that work for me a lot (Myers feels really dangerous, those long shots with Michael out for a stroll in the neighborhood). If it ended here, I think it would be more satisfying than what came after.  4/5Total Watched: 28 // First Time: 21
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Oct 16, 2022 15:13
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28. The Seventh Curse Where to watch? It's actually on Plex so you can stream it for free with their video player  This CAT 3 Hong Kong film stars a bunch of Chinese film actors including Chow Yun Fat. Its a loving wild time. You've got mystical demons, kung fu, monsters in suits, cults, Indiana Jones shenanigans, shoot outs , more kung fu. This is a movie that starts off running at full speed and never slows down. A lot is crammed into the 80 minute run time and its all insane. If you are not familiar with CAT 3 films this is defninitely one to start off on its easily one of the bests there is.
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Oct 16, 2022 16:14
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#19: Night of the Howling Beast (1975)To Serve Man A werewolf cuts a bloody swath through the Tibetan mountainside. I said Fury of the Wolfman wouldn't be the last Paul Naschy movie I watched, and I was right. There's definitely a clear pattern emerging — Waldemar Daninski is afflicted with the curse of lycanthropy and proceeds to slaughter only the people who deserve to be eaten by a werewolf. In this one Waldemar devours a tribe of mountain bandits, halts TWO attempted rapes by killing the would-be rapists, and fights a murderous yeti in hand-to-hand combat. Seriously, what is it with this guy and yetis? Waldemar picks up the curse after being bitten by two cannibalistic sisters who live in a cave, but at least they have the decency to give him a three-way before turning him into a monster. A very weird but watchable hodge-podge of sleaze, gore and superhero wish-fulfillment.  out of 5#20: Elvira's Haunted Hills (2001) Scream, Queen!Elvira's 20th century schtick invades an approximation of Roger Corman's Poe cycle. I wonder why it took until 2001 to figure out that this was the way to make Elvira a movie star. Her obvious physical attributes aside, the appeal of her gimmick has always been the juxtaposition of her vampire vixen look with her Valley Girl personality. So, the idea of dropping her into scenarios where she looks the part but clashes with the proceedings otherwise seems like a no-brainer. Imagine Elvira as the Bride of Frankenstein, or the Final Girl of a slasher, or the damsel in a 50s creature feature, etc. Here she's inserted into a storyline straight from an old Vincent Price movie, with family curses and torture devices and crumbling castles aplenty. The idea is a good one, but the movie's tendency is to play everything as broadly as possible. This has the unfortunate effect of minimizing Elvira's presence. If the material had been played straight with the exception of her, I feel like a lot of the jokes would have landed better. It's a solid concept that could have used a bit more refining. .5 out of 51. Dracula (Spanish)(1931) 2. Trick r Treat (2007) 3. Ghost Ship (2002) H20 4. The Devil Within Her (1975) Goodnight, Mommy 5. Ghost Story (1981) Paperbacks From Hell 6. Nomads (1986) Punk Vacation 7. Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969) Thrilla in Manila 8. Skeleton Man (2004) Osteology 9. Muppets Haunted Mansion/Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXXI Halloween is Special 10. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) 11. Werewolf of London (1935) 12. Cat People (1942) Golden Years 13. Mortuary (1983) 14. Unmasked Part 25 (1988) Zombie Honeymoon 15. The Alien Factor (1978) Spaced Invaders 16. Deadstream (2022) Glitches 17. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)Whispers in the Dark 18. Fury of the Wolfman (1975) Full Moon 19. Night of the Howling Beast (1975) To Serve Man 20. Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001) Scream, Queen! 
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Oct 16, 2022 16:30
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38. Mikey USA, 1992. Dir. Dennis Dimster Children of the Damned A freshly adopted psychopathic boy proceeds to terrorize his new parents and neighbors. A fine enough movie. It had some great acting, especially from the main kid who played the part fittingly sinister. Unfortunately, it had a really cheap, lifetime original, made-for-TV feel that did it no favors. Overwrought dialogue, melodramatic music, uninteresting camera work, you get the idea. A very overblown '90s production, for good and for bad. A lot of comparisons could be made to The Stepfather, but don't expect it to climb to such heights. A decent recommend. 6/10. Stray thoughts: Typical '90s rich wife occupation, fish tank design. What's with the overly elaborate marble machine in the classroom, and why were such things so seemingly ubiquitous in the '90s? When Mikey goes up to apologize to Rachel in the bath, I love that she's apparently soaking in a tub full of blue kool-aid. 
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Oct 16, 2022 16:52
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30. Slaughter High 1986 Evil Highs Tonight  First off, credit where credit is due -- this movie has a respectable amount of dick in it. The 80s were pretty one-sided when it came to nudity in horror movies, so I can respect a movie that flips the trend and is like, 'Naw, here's some dude's big dumb wiener hanging out'. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn't as interested in flipping genre conventions. As a relatively stock 'bullied kid kills his bullies years later' movie, it's totally fine. I'm not sure if the reveal that the kid they tortured is the murderer was supposed to be a twist (they act like it is), but it could not be more obvious from about five minutes in (and it's listed on the poster, so). The movie also struggles with the fact that we're following a group of wildly unfunny, grating adults who were all sadistic, rear end in a top hat teenagers, and there's no real reason to root for any of them to survive. The Final Girl is the only one close to being redeemable, who we're supposed to empathize with because she was slightly less into being an rear end in a top hat than the other teenagers were, but the motivation doesn't really work. As an 80s slasher movie, there's not a lot that goes particularly right, but there's also not a lot that goes wrong either. The kills are occasionally pretty cool (the exploding stomach from a bad beer is a solid one, for instance) and the low lighting does a lot to cover for any SFX weaknesses. One thing that made me laugh is that the cast has a lot of European actors who are playing American, and the accent basically comes and goes at will. A pretty unremarkable entry into a genre that is best remembered now for the poster and box art (killer jester in a letterman jacket) than for anything else. Rating: 4.8/10 Exploding Joints PKMN Trainer Red fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 18:18
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39. The Nail Gun Massacre USA, 1985. Dir. Bill Leslie, Terry Lofton V/H/S A woman is gang-raped at a construction site, and then those same men get killed one by one by a person dressed like a weekend warrior air-soft player, wielding a pneumatic nail gun. Low budget, trashy garbage. Stilted acting, amateur camera work, cheap special effects, and no sound design to speak of. Extraordinarily aimless and boring, what little plot there is going seemingly nowhere. I'd like to say they did a good job of keeping you guessing as to the identity of the killer, except really they made it seem extremely obvious very early who the killer was, and then subverted it at the last minute for seemingly no reason except as a gotcha. If there's one silver lining to this movie, the cheesy one-liners the killer keeps spitting out loop right back around to being very funny, especially considering they're often followed by a deep, modulated belly laugh. Absolutely would not recommend. 4/10. Stray thoughts: Nail gun kills have got to be one of the laziest special effects I can think of. I appreciate when a movie films next to a busy road, and just lets all the audio in the scene get drowned out by car noises. 
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Oct 16, 2022 18:25
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 73) Prey - 2022 - Hulu This was dramatically better than the last predator film. Overall, I felt this was okay. I really like the concept of people in the past dealing with the predators. Here we have native americans dealing with a predator. For the most part, everyone was fine. I did find sitting through this in English was a detraction because the dialog was too modern for the time. I do understand the trend to this because older styles of grammar and slang can come across too strange to modern ears. I ended up restarting my watch in the dubbed Comanche which improved things a lot for me. Yeah, not the same as if the actors were speaking the language proper, but I'll take what I can get even with lack of subtitles. The film does have some flaws, but none of them were dealbreakers for me even though as a History major, I do get picky with historical accuracy. Case in point, the French had better relations with the indigenous tribes because they depended on them for the fur trade so they wouldn't've acted like they did. They also didn't have the French language to the dialect that was spoken then, but that's something someone like me would've caught because of classes I've taken. I did raise an eyebrow at the appearance of the pistol we see at the end of Predator 2 . While on one hand, it was a nice call back to a previous film, but on the other hand it has the implication that the tribe still dies because more predators arrive and eventually reclaim the pistol. Again, flaws aside, this was still a pretty good film worth seeing. Still not sure why they didn't decide to take it to a theatrical release.  74) Smile - 2022 - Theater I hadn't planned on seeing this yet, but when you get put on assist to prevent people with no ID sneaking in, you end up seeing the movie over time. Storyline here is a doctor has to deal with a trauma curse that will eventually kill her. This essentially is JumpScares: The Movie. It's not awful, just kinda average to me. It's the sort of thing I'd put on streaming for background noise. I do feel the film is overlong for what it is. There is a cat death which did not sit well with me since the cat in question's a friendly furball like my two. Spoiling be damned, the reveal is at the birthday party so you can be prepared. I do also have issue with the ending in that it essentially implies you can never heal from your trauma on which I call bullshit. I've been through some severe trauma in life and while it did take time to heal and move on, it was still possible. It hasn't hovered over me like some doom from a Viking saga. The actors are okay enough, and some of the visuals are nicely unnerving, but that's about it.
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Oct 16, 2022 18:30
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M_Sinistrari posted:They also didn't have the French language to the dialect that was spoken then, but that's something someone like me would've caught because of classes I've taken. I They didn't speak fully reconstructed period dialect French, but they did use funky non-standard dialect Acadian/French Canadian French just for this. That's 100% not modern Standard French, which yeah didn't exist. They're one of the only movies to actually try so I'm not gonna ding them for it just because it's not literally accurate.
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Oct 16, 2022 18:35
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Movie 13: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Origin of Evil) "Well why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?" Since I'd already seen Halloween, it was pretty much a choice between this and ... uhh, "Satan's Dog", for my Origin of Evil pick. Not to cast aspersions at Satan's Dog, I think I made the right choice. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a wonderfully atmospheric sci-fi horror movie where the people of San Francisco get replaced by alien clones. It's a shame that so much of the movie has percolated through to our collective shared mind, because the first half of the movie kinda falls flat. The big mystery of what exactly is going on is kinda ruined, when everyone knows 100% what is in fact going on because you've seen and heard most of the plot through references and cultural osmosis. But the second half of the movie is still dynamite. Once the pod people have gained a significant foothold and the movie switches gear, poo poo really hits the fan. We go from a mystery to outright paranoia. Who is a pod person and who is a human? Who can you trust? Where can you hide? The tension builds rapidly and the effect is wonderful. A large part of the credit goes to the movie's cast, a veritable who's who of late 1970s American cinema. They portray both terrified humans and alien pod people really well. I also want to highlight the movie's soundtrack. Many scenes either have no background music, or weirdly discordant and offputting noise that contributes to the eerie and alien atmosphere. And the screech of the pod people as they spot humans? Justifiably and understandably one of the more famous sound effects in horror history. And while there aren't too many special effects in the movie, the ones that ARE there are just absolutely hosed up. Good lord. And of course I have to give props to the film's ending, which is pure cosmic horror: we can't win. We're doomed to lose. The best you can do is delay the inevitable for a while, and even that at a terrible cost. / 5My October 2022 Movies: 1. Nope, 2. Night at the Eagle Inn, 3. Day of the Mummy, 4. Freaky, 5. Choose or Die, 6. Dog Soldiers, 7. Killer Klowns from Outer Space, 8. Shopping Tour, 9. Halloween Specials, 10. The Visit, 11. Ghostwatch, 12. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 13. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 
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Oct 16, 2022 18:39
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 #79.) Amityville in the Hood (2021; Tubi) What if a gang ran a grow op in the Amityville house? That's the bold question posed by this trek into the human soul. When some of the weed is stolen from the house, it soon spreads across the country, leading to mayhem. Low on scares, high on attempts at inner-city crime drama (in upstate New York) that ring about as true as when Charles Band was targeting an urban demographic in the '00s. Then we start cutting to other Amityville movies the director has done, to pad out the run-time, because they couldn't come up with enough ideas about weed that makes you see things and get possessed to fill out a full script. Then it's back to the original storyline in time to pull out a finale with less development than an earlier scene about negotiations for a woman to drop a guy back off at his parents' condo after she gives him a blowjob. Good as a sleep aid, and the references to other Amityville movies are at least a wave at continuity, but no reason to actually watch this. “Lamps, and clocks, and mirrors, and even a dollhouse from that evil place have all been present during several copycat killings in the '90s.” Rating: 3/10
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Oct 16, 2022 18:47
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Darthemed posted:
But wait. Did the Amityville house move into the hood? Or has the hood expanded to the point where the Amityville house is now in the hood? Because it's a specific house, isn't it? Or did I already think about this more than the filmmakers did?
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Oct 16, 2022 18:56
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Xiahou Dun posted:They didn't speak fully reconstructed period dialect French, but they did use funky non-standard dialect Acadian/French Canadian French just for this. That's 100% not modern Standard French, which yeah didn't exist. Yeah, it wasn't a deal breaker for me, but at most annoying considering the care and attention they took elsewhere.
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Oct 16, 2022 19:15
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 29. Breakdown (1997) Jeff and Amy Taylor are moving from Boston to New Mexico, but when their SUV breaks down, a trucker named Red offers to drive them to the nearest pay phone. Jeff stays with their car, Amy disappears, and when Jeff tracks down Red, he claims to have never met Jeff and Amy before. This is a really well paced suspenseful movie, and I was wondering if this was going to turn into The Vanishing, but it is less dark and more action-focused. Kurt Russell is a sympathetic hero (even if he makes some stupid decisions, and by the way did he have a car phone at one point? if so why is anyone going for a pay phone? maybe I missed that), but JT Walsh is the star of the show as extremely cold and plain Red. There are some memorable side characters too - I'm always happy to see MC Gainey. As Jeff digs deeper, he finds even more conspiracy than a single disappearance, and the last act goes full-blown action hero movie with lots of wild stunts that had my full attention. In terms of the challenge, this is on the expanded list Fran posted, but to explain a bit more of how it fits - the first rough characters Jeff and Amy meet talk about how nice their new SUV is, how they must be rich, must be visiting from their rich home in Massachusetts and so on, and they certainly 'accidentally invite problems into their lives' by accepting the help of Red. 4.5/5 -- Bingo Square: Yuppie NightmareTotal Watched: 29 // First Time: 22 Hey look, my first bingo! 
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Oct 16, 2022 19:23
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Clear-cut Wow what a film. Definitely has tonal whiplash at times but it nails that Canada and North vibe. 4 spoops out of 5
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Oct 16, 2022 19:29
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29. Encounter of the Spooky Kind Where to watch? I have no idea , I watched it on Plex  This is a great probably unheard of Hong Kong Kung Fu Horror comedy. It doesn't really star anyone that I know. It is about a man beset by a wizard who is trying to kill him so a rich man can have his wife. Its got great physical comedy and tons of kung fu. Its particulary got really good kung fu sequences and some fun horror set pieces. This is really more a comedy than a horror film but there is some spooky stuff. It also has a banger of a finale with two wizards dueling each other. Just a great fun film.
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Oct 16, 2022 19:44
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  31. Night Tide (1961) Which has two great posters that feel like tonal opposites. A proto-mumblecore film spiced with an atmosphere of cryptic unease that reminded me of Carnival of Souls. It's not as artful as Carnival but it also was shot on a nothing budget, lingers on the mind, and even has a prominent fairground pier! One big difference is that Night Tide is a male perspective: Dennis Hopper plays a lonely sailor who, unsoothed by the jazz flute of Paul Horn at a beatnik joint, pushes himself into the life of Linda Lawson. She works as a mermaid for the carnival, feels a deep connection with the sea, and may or may not be a siren of the depths for real. But what's definitely for real is that her last boyfriends drowned mysteriously, and that Hopper don't care because Lawson is a smokeshow! Young Dennis Hopper caught me by surprise, I don't think I've ever seen him in a role this soft-spoken and uncertain. Avoid Night Tide if you're looking for horror fireworks, this story does end up in a shocking place but it's a slow, soft journey getting there. I would call the movie laidback or relaxed except that there's always the faintest tingle of something unspoken and unresolved in the air, never dozing off into mere romance but not especially creepy either. Yet it does hold together and it slips a strange fishy something into the back of your mind, a little haunted loneliness that feels all the more real because there's no bombast in the presentation. "I guess we're all a little afraid of what we love."  .5 / 5  For Spooky Bingo, the mermaid focus checks off H2O.  That's 31 films down, I've met my target for the month, and I'm still hungry for more. Gonna keep going for blackout bingo.
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Oct 16, 2022 19:56
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24. The Man in the Orange Jacket (2014) M.O.Ž. Directed by Aik Karapetian 🎃 A Perfect Getaway 🎃 "Left some hundred families penniless taoday."  The Man in the Orange Jacket is the very first movie (horror or otherwise) I've seen out of Latvia. This is a slow, creepy, and somewhat disorienting movie. There are apparent time and perspective jumps. I'm not sure what you call it when the director himself is an unreliable narrator. Either way, it's not always apparent that what you're watching is actually happening now, happened sometime in the past, or is just a manifestation of the main character's guilt or regret. I'm not sure what any of it means. It seems like it's more of an exercise in style than anything else. At least it succeeded there. 👻👻👻.5/5 October Challenge 6/? 1. Blood Feast (1963), 2. Sunshine (2007), 3. Relic (2020), 4. Mortuary (2005), 5. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), 6. Perfect Blue (1997) Spooky Bingo 18/36 1. Rodan (1956), 2. Carrie (2013), 3. Gargoyles (1972), 4. Ticks (1993), 5. Penda’s Fen (1974), 6. Crimson Peak (2015), 7. A Field in England (2013), 8. The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959), 9. Carnival of Sinners (1943), 10. Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), 11. The Purge (2013), 12. Halloween with the Addams Family (1977), 13. Life After Beth (2014), 14. Puppet Master (1989), 15. Ice Cream Man (1995), 16. Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare (2017), 17. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), 18. The Man in the Orange Jacket (2014)  Total 24/31 twernt fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 20:03
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:But wait. Did the Amityville house move into the hood? Or has the hood expanded to the point where the Amityville house is now in the hood? Because it's a specific house, isn't it? Or did I already think about this more than the filmmakers did? There's an Amityville in Space. Because of course there is. I haven't watched it. Yet.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:24
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Sono posted:There's an Amityville in Space. Because of course there is. I haven't watched it. Yet. Welll I mean the house WAS pretty big, I guess you could technically strap on some booster rockets... E: Now I kinda want to watch some of the dumbest horror movie sequels. Give me suggestions, thread. Leprechaun in the Hood! Dracula 3000! The aforementioned Amityvilles! Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 20:27
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October 16 - Devil Dog: Hound From Hell I specifically went looking for a made for TV movie for my spooky square and this one came up. I remembered it being known for being especially goofy and awful so I had to go for it.  (The devil dog has horns! Adorable!) Satanists buy a breeding dog and make devil dogs. Then they kill people's pets and drive past with the local vegetable truck offering devil puppies to the grieving families. Once in the homes, the puppies turn the families into satanists. A plan so simple, it's a wonder that no one had tried it before. In one of these families, the father resists the devil dog's cute puppy dog eyes and attempts to free his family. So... satan definitely hosed a German shepherd. As you might expect from a 1970's TV movie, there's little in the way of suspense and nothing in the way of action here. At one point, the pup of the beast tries to force the dad into shoving his arm into a conveniently upside down lawn mower and that's the most horror you get here. The family is boring even with the touch of the late 70's "disintegration of the American family!" trope briefly popping in; even after satan takes over their lives conflict is perfunctory. "Maybe we should consider therapy." "Naw." "Oh. Okay then." That's the level of drama at play here even when the family is being really obvious about worshiping satan. And then there's the dog. Yeah, that is a very friendly, very happy dog that is enjoying all of the attention. It's so unconvincingly evil that they replace it for the climax of the film. You can't just play scary music over a shot of a dog just chilling out and then it's scary. Doesn't work. The best thing about this movie is that it's just as cheesy as its reputation said. It's something fun to laugh at, not something you'd want to watch on its own merits. As per the ancient prophecy, Terror-Vision is fulfilled:  Shaman Tank Spec posted:Since I'd already seen Halloween, it was pretty much a choice between this and ... uhh, "Satan's Dog", for my Origin of Evil pick. Not to cast aspersions at Satan's Dog, I think I made the right choice. This wasn't here when I started watching!  Shaman Tank Spec posted:E: Now I kinda want to watch some of the dumbest horror movie sequels. Give me suggestions, thread. Leprechaun in the Hood! Dracula 3000! The aforementioned Amityvilles! Evil Dead 3! 
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Oct 16, 2022 20:34
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:But wait. Did the Amityville house move into the hood? Or has the hood expanded to the point where the Amityville house is now in the hood? Because it's a specific house, isn't it? Or did I already think about this more than the filmmakers did?  #80.) A Town Full of Ghosts (2022; Tubi) A married couple of Youtubers move into a ghost town, with plans to buy it and make it a tourist destination. The majority of the film is the footage found after their disappearance. Part Paranormal Activity, part The Shining, part Youtube creepypasta, I ended up liking this more than I expected to. Maybe it's because I'm so used to western found footage being crap, but this was a pleasant surprise. They made sure to include pressures beyond 'we're in a creepy place,' with the main couple being under financial strain as well. Maybe not a huge amount of variety to what's going on, but I appreciate the effort. The mental disintegration of the main character feels a little too elliptical, but all the essential pieces are there in play. The location gets more development, even if some of it is delivered in an exposition dump via some footage found by the characters in the found footage. I'll admit to being a sucker for concentric found footage, so maybe that point went down smoother for me than it would most people, but the level of quality the film reached with such an evident low budget left me interested to see more by this director. “Bad luck to toast with water, but not with sparkling water. Did you know that?” Rating: 5/10
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Oct 16, 2022 20:37
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Random Stranger posted:This wasn't here when I started watching! Sorry, I was remembering wrong: it wasn't SATAN'S Dog, it was Dracula's. And it sure sounds like something: quote:Dracula's Dog (U.K. title: Zoltan...Hound of Dracula; original working title: Hounds of Dracula) is a 1977 American horror film starring Michael Pataki and José Ferrer. It revolves around a dog who is turned into a vampire by a member of the Dracula family, who is also a vampire Thanks for the clarification, Wikipedia. Otherwise we wouldn't have guessed a member of the Dracula family was also a vampire. And yeah Evil Dead 3 owns. Unless it's a different movie than Army of Darkness in which case I have no idea!
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Oct 16, 2022 20:46
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:E: Now I kinda want to watch some of the dumbest horror movie sequels. Give me suggestions, thread. Leprechaun in the Hood! Dracula 3000! The aforementioned Amityvilles! Blindly throw a dart at the Resident Evil sequels.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:47
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:Sorry, I was remembering wrong: it wasn't SATAN'S Dog, it was Dracula's. And it sure sounds like something: Dracula's Dog is another infamous movie, too. And I was talking about Army of Darkness since if you put it next to Evil Dead 1 and 2 it's a "dumb" horror movie sequel. Why that one is barely scary at all.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:51
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6. Tenebrae Dario is at it again! One of the best horror movies ever, and a shoe-in top giallo or slasher movie. One of my favs, but just rewatching for the first time in maybe 15 years. First time seeing the blu-ray which looks really good. And those Goblin dudes sure make a cool score. This is just so outrageously cool. The thrills, the groovin' style, the clever playing with convention and expectation etc. It had been so long, plus mingled with memory of other Dario movies, so I had no idea who the killer was. I should rewatch favs more often, yet it sure is fun having essentially a new to me movie again. Doesn't get much cooler than this. Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 20:56
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 #21: Men (2022) I know that bussy grip
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Oct 16, 2022 21:01
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 #81.) The Specter of Terror (1973; Youtube) Women are being stalked by a man with wild eyes and disheveled hair, and he's killing some of them. Something about Spanish gialli (amarillos?) just doesn't tend to land with me. It's not the music, which tends to be groovy, and it's not the lighting or sets or costuming, and there's bottles of J&B scattered about. I guess it's the plotting. The ones I've seen seem to deemphasize the mystery of who the killer is, focusing instead on neuroses and hang-ups for the main characters. Sure, that can be done well, as Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon shows, but it takes a finer touch to keep it interesting the whole way through when we know from the start who the killer is. On top of that, I feel more worried about the welfare of any animals that show up on-screen in the Spanish productions. With this film specifically, the killer just didn't have much in the way of interesting qualities. He was a Vietnam vet who was addicted to heroin and had gone crazy in the war. That's pretty much it for his murder motivations. The main female lead has more sense of depth to her character, but doesn't get to express it through actions so much as through her dialogue with other characters. Not a lot to make this a memorable film, unless some of the music really catches your ear, though the flashbacks for the villain's more haunted moments are a nice touch. “Give me some smoke.” Rating: 5/10
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Oct 16, 2022 21:59
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40. Loft Japan, 2005. Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa Paperbacks from Hell A successful novelist moves out into the country, and procrastinates with the help of a neighborly professor and his 1000 year old haunted bog mummy. It was well acted, had a couple of really nice looking props, and used lighting in some very interesting ways. It was quiet, meditative, and absolutely bored me to tears. A lot of very still, very quiet scenes where nothing much happened. I think it kept trying to build dread, and failed because without something for the feeling to latch onto it kept dissipating. This is the same problem I had with one of the directors earlier films, Kairo, aka Pulse. Just way too slow, and took way too long for any sort of pay-off. I've noticed a trend, where I'll really like his movies in which stuff happens (Cure, Retribution), and strongly dislike his movies where nothing happens (Kairo, this). A slight recommend, but only if you're more patient than me. 4.5/10. Stray thoughts: There was a fantastic effect, about a third of the way through, when our heroine follows the ghost in black to a pier on the swamp's edge, and the ghost points down to the water. It then very slowly, very subtly, piece by piece, starts disappearing. Very eerie shot. 
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Oct 16, 2022 22:17
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October 16α - Quicksilver Highway Another TV movie that came up when I was looking around and, hey, it's Clive Barker again. Also Steven King. This is an anthology movie, split in half, adapting one story from each of them. I'm guessing that someone pitched a horror anthology TV show and though that fell through they still produced two episodes and slammed them together to make a TV movie. It wasn't unheard of the do that to some failed pilots. The first story here is "The Body Politic" which is adapted from a Barker story. This is a comedic story where a surgeon's hands declare a revolution against the tyranny of the body. The other story is "The Chattering Teeth" in which a mechanical pair of teeth help a man out when a hitchhiker threatens him. "The Body Politic" is the best of these two. It's goofy as hell, the effects are weak, but it's still a lot of fun as the talking hands plot their revolt and attempt to raise an arm-y. It doesn't lean into the horror much, there aren't a lot of hands skulking about in shadows waiting for their moment to strike. Instead it revels in absurdity and is a lot of fun. "The Chattering Teeth" on the other hand feels like three pages of story stretched to fill the hour (with commercials) runtime. I don't remember the original story here, so I'm not sure how padded this is, but it comes across as a lot. And once you introduce the idea that the story is going to be about the teeth and that there's a hitchhiker, it's kind of obvious where things are going. They're not even especially creative about it. The wrapper segments have Christopher Lloyd as a traveling carnival guy telling creepy stories to someone whose life will soon reflect that story. He's good at it, really chewing the scenery exactly as you'd want a horror host to do. But in these two episodes he's in completely different contexts and I'm wondering if that was part of the hang up in making this a series. If he had been more of a cryptkeeper or Rod Serling, it might have made things flow better. But overall, pretty good for television horror from the 90's. The Barker story was great, the King story was okay (these are reversed in some releases, apparently). Given that this is an anthology that comes from two masters of horror, I'm filling in my Spooky square for Paperbacks From Hell. 
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Oct 16, 2022 22:39
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7) Halloween (2018) 8) Halloween Kills 9) Halloween Ends Challenge: Yuppie Nightmare My in-PC disc player still isn't working so I skipped Halloween 78 this year, but it's not like I haven't seen it over and over. I was able to watch the complete Green trilogy in one sitting, though. I don't feel the need to go into too much detail on the first two movies. H40 remains a very serviceable sequel-cum-remake of the original classic, with enough new beats to keep it from being a slavish retread. And Kills is I think much underrated; its Nietzschean theme of "when fighting monsters" is disliked in some parts, but I think it mostly succeeds in doing what Halloween 4 tried to do and failed in having people do nothing stupid but die anyway. It was also really good to see Chuck Cyphers and Kyle Richards back again. Which brings me to Ends. Spoilers begin here, obviously. It starts with the Yuppie Nightmare: the rich couple invite Corey Cunningham to babysit their son and he kills the boy. And this happens the Halloween after Michael is "killed" and turns into an urban legend. The implication of evil never dying because the world will fill the hole is fairly clear, and compounded when Corey kills Dr Mathis and his injured hand heals. The capstone on it is the scene near the end where a dying Corey grabs Michael's ankle as Michael recovers his mask and knife and prepares to go for Laurie one last time. He isn't doing it to help Laurie; he's doing it as one last attempt to take back from Michael what he wants to be his. In fact the whole movie is redolent of folk horror - this is how the stories begin, not where they end. Yes, it's Friday part 5 - Corey is even named for Sean Cunningham and Corey Feldman - but it's also Candyman, it's every myth and fairytale of the boogeyman who lives in the shadows. Do I resent the absence of Michael in the first half of the movie? No, I do not. His story, and Laurie's, were all but told - only the final confrontation remained. So Green did a bait-and-switch, using the setup of "you can't kill evil" to introduce the guy who would have been the next Michael Myers if not for the fact that the original wasn't quite finished being Michael Myers yet. Michael lives in the sewers for four years because legends don't walk the streets. He doesn't kill Corey, and kills people for him, because like calls to like. But when Corey tries to be Michael, that's when Michael wakes up and reasserts himself. It's an imperfect movie, to be sure. I would have liked to see its themes dovetailed more neatly with Kills. But it's not afraid to reach, and for that it deserves respect because drat few movies in this subgenre dare to be anything other than formulaic tripe with the next sequel kept ever in mind.
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Oct 16, 2022 22:53
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10) X Really enjoyed this. Sleazy, grimy and some very entertaining kills. Can't wait to see Pearl, the prequel. 11) The Exorcist III: The Legion Cut I love the Exorcist 3, and it's nice to see a cut that is closer to Blatty's original vision. It's not great to actually watch though, since it involves a bunch of grainy dailies. Interesting for a die-hard fan like me though! 12) Ring (Ringu) I haven't seen this in like 20 years. It's very good, though I think I prefer the American remake because it's scarier. This is very spooky and the story is fleshed out a lot more, but just not as scary. 13) Chatroom This was not great. I like the premise - a sociopathic teenager preys on depressed people in chat rooms to try to make them kill themselves. It's just poorly executed and half the cast are forgotten about half way through the film. 14) Alien vs Predator I've never seen this before and I should have listened to critics and not bothered. How they managed to take two of the coolest monsters in movie history and make them this boring is beyond me. 15) Color Out Of Space loving hell yeah. Weird, creepy and stylish as all hell with Nicolas Cage being completely demented. Loved it. 16) Ghostwatch Literally the best thing UK TV has ever produced. There's a 30th anniversary blu-ray coming out on the 31st that you absolutely should buy if you are a horror fan. This was the most controversial thing ever to air in the UK and has never been shown since, after literally a million phone calls were made to the BBC and the newspapers blamed it for suicides and PTSD. I cannot understate how good this is. 17) Candyman (2021) I thought this was going to be a lovely remake but it's a surprisingly thoughtful sequel with some great kills and a lot to say about lovely cops. Really enjoyed it.
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Oct 16, 2022 23:03
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M_Sinistrari posted:Yeah, it wasn't a deal breaker for me, but at most annoying considering the care and attention they took elsewhere. Hoss, I'm a historical linguist. If you're disappointed by that, literally nothing can satisfy you. That's in the top 5 most accurate uses of language in a period film I've ever seen. We don't have the full picture of what that kind of French sounded like, and even if we did no one is going to have native-like ability in it. Using actors who are speakers of the descendent dialects is about the only other option short of inventing time travel. By that logic, almost all of English language historical movies fail : The VVitch isn't even going as hard.
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Oct 16, 2022 23:12
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 32. Ritual (2012) Godawful writing and a godawful premise. This is tedious, eye-rolling trash that is way more disappointing and aggravating than bargain basement splatter garbage because director Joko Anwar has a good eye and the handcam work is solid, so you can see the talent being wasted. When Rio Dewanto claws himself out of a shallow grave to start the film, there's a brief sense that you're in for something cool, and then he reveals that he has amnesia, and it's like the roller coaster shamefully reverses back into the station. Gee, I loving wonder if pre-amnesia Dewanto might not entirely be the victim in this hunted-in-the-woods scenario? Huh, who might that masked figure be stabbing a pregnant woman in a "PLAY ME" video?? If your story is actually loving interesting you don't have to do this puzzlebox drip. Every long segment stumbling through the woods is just another excruciatingly dragged-out delay for the reveal, which itself doesn't offer anything more satisfying than "Because psycho killers like doing psycho poo poo!" Dewanto's performance of fear is so-so and his English language acting is outright bad so there's nothing to hang onto. Just the most obnoxious, hackneyed substitution of confusion for suspense. 0.5 / 5  Ritual is an Indonesian film that checks off Thrilla in Manila. Please do yourself a favor and watch anything else for this challenge. 
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Oct 16, 2022 23:36
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30. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1978 Where to watch? Uh gently caress I have no idea. I watched it on plex  I honestly can't recall ever seeing this. I know I had to have seen it at some point but I don't remember when so it was fun to rewatch it and no remember anything. Donald Sutherland is great in this and honestly the whole cast is absolutely baller. This is just a well made , well acted, well directed, well done horror film. There's a reason its a classic and it should be. Also PG rated boobs. That surprised me. To many films today don't have any wow factor and there was several times during this film that I was like "Wow that was loving great". Anyway its a excellent film.
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Oct 17, 2022 00:00
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41. The Vagrant France/USA, 1992. Dir. Chris Walas Yuppie Nightmare A man moves into his new house in the suburbs, sees a homeless man in his kitchen like ONE time, and spirals into insanity. This one was great! Wonderfully shot, great makeup effects (the director previously did special effects work on The Fly and Naked Lunch), and amazingly evocative set design. The vagrant was such a marvelously malevolent and mysterious figure, and perfectly captured the platonic ideal of what a stereotypical yuppie's conception of a homeless person would be. I wasn't sold at first on the comedy aspect of the film, just kinda seeming more humorous and comedic than actually funny, but it quickly grew on me when things started to escalate. Just one of those movies everybody seemed to have a lot of fun making. Solid recommend. 7/10. 
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Oct 17, 2022 00:01
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38. Shutter (2004) I don't think I've seen any Thai movies before, so this was a cool change of pace. A photographer, Tun, and his girlfriend driving home drunk from a party accidentally kill a woman and drive off, who starts appearing in Tun's photographs and haunting the couple. I won't go too into the plot because it has a bunch of fun twists I don't wanna spoil for anyone who might go on to watch it (especially one particularly tough third act reveal). It's apparently a very well-known movie in Thailand which is cool, it definitely deserves to be. Lots of creeping dread, a bunch of genuinely spooky imagery (including one jumpscare that totally loving got me), top-notch sound design and a really great lead performance. 4 out of 5! 38/31, watched: Scary Movie, Final Destination 4, Happy Death Day, Final Destination, No One Gets Out Alive, Smile, Freaky, Body Bags, Alien Psychosis, The Invisible Man, The Last Exorcism, Final Destination 2, Werewolves of the Third Reich, Unfriended, Final Destination 3, Hellraiser (2022), Deadstream, Final Destination 5, Village of the Damned, Piranha 3D, The Awakening, The Ruins, Sissy, Happy Death Day 2 U, Crush The Skull, Hell Fest, Diary of the Dead, Trick 'r Treat, Swimfan, Slumber Party Massacre (1982), The Ranger, Evil Dead (2013), Halloween Ends, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Parents, Duel, Tiny Cinema, Shutter 
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Oct 17, 2022 00:08
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18. Horror Noire (2019) Bingo Category: 🤪 A great Black Horror 101 documentary. I’d heard Tananarive Due mention it on Nightlight, the Black horror fiction podcast, and given how common it is to be undereducated in this area it was exactly what I needed. An excellent mix of talking heads, from directors to actors to educators to writers to bloggers. When I want to hear about representation in media, I want to hear about it from the people in question; this nails that. I noted down a bunch of movies I gotta check out, one of which was 19. Ganja & Hess (1973) Bingo Category: Zombie Honeymoon Dr. Hess Green is wealthy, handsome, intelligent, a snappy dresser, a father, and a functional blood addict. I felt the initial transformation was a little unclear—despite a series of title cards laying out exactly what happens in Part I—but the film has such a dreamy atmosphere that once I got onto the same wavelength I Got it all (or as much as you can with a movie like this on first viewing) and really dug it. The doomed (?) relationship is between Hess and the widow of the man who turned him, Ganja. She’s easy to like, even when she’s being demanding or rude or impertinent. She explains to Hess exactly how she got that way, too, and it’s no surprise when they fall in love. I like that instead of vampires we’re dealing with…whatever it is you become when you’re infected like the Myrthians, a pre-Christendom African culture Dr. Green studies in his capacity as an anthropologist. You’re fine going into sunlight. Running water is not a concern. Hess, and later Ganja, live perfectly fulfilling human lives—just ones interspersed with blood drinking when the drums get to be too much. They probably could live forever but at least someone’s not going to. Beautiful film. In Horror Noire, an anecdote is shared about director Bill Gunn coming to Howard University to discuss filmmaking. He’s unable to screen this one, though, because at the time the only existing print was in the collection of a New York art museum. That tells you what you need to know, I think.
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Oct 17, 2022 00:17
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The basic deal with Ganja and Hess is that the studio hired Gunn to make a straight vampire film and he just didn’t and had a whole addiction metaphor and black identity art film. And the studio was mad as hell so then Gunn just intentionally removed key exposition scenes and replaced them with ad libbed character scenes and even jumbled some stuff around. There’s a bunch of deleted scenes that actually like explain what’s happening. Spike Lee made a remake that basically tells the same story incredibly faithfully down to the script and dialogue but includes those deleted exposition scenes. And truthfully it’s less interesting.
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Oct 17, 2022 00:24
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Would Mark Gatiss' documentary M.R. James Ghost Writer count for Behind the Screams a bingo square?
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Oct 17, 2022 00:25
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:But wait. Did the Amityville house move into the hood? Or has the hood expanded to the point where the Amityville house is now in the hood? Because it's a specific house, isn't it? Or did I already think about this more than the filmmakers did? as a Long Islander… kind of the second one??? Amityville is not the “nicest” town on the island, but I also don’t think the house is in the “less nice” parts of Amityville
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Oct 17, 2022 00:27
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